As wireless communications have increased, utilization of IEEE 802.11 protocols has also increased. In IEEE 802.11 communications a network allocation vector (NAV) may be utilized to reduce the probability of interference. However, according to the IEE 802.11 protocol, a NAV that is updated by a request to send (RTS) message may be undesirably reset by receivers if a valid physical layer (PHY) header is not received within a certain timeout.